It gives me great pleasure to announce that my young adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy adventure Darien Connors will be developed into a comic book series.

It’s also a great honor to announce that acclaimed comic book artist Ray Dillon (twitter: @RayDillon) will be the artist, colorist, letterer and just about everything else you can think of for this book.

Ray’s resume is quite impressive, working on my favorite author Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones comic book adaption. He also worked on NY Times Best Seller The Last Unicorn, the gritty re-imagining of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – TMNT- Dawn of the Ninja, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box (I have a few jokes I could um…stick in there…but I’ll leave it be) and Image Comics’ Nightmare World.

For those of you not familiar with the Darien Connors series, it follows the exploits of a boy necromancer named Darien who discovers that not only is he not human but he’s part of an ancient war between alien races.

While he learns of his power, legacy, destiny and importance to the battle, Darien establishes bonds with new, strange friends and learns his magical craft of Kishpu.

All while fighting for his life, his family and peace throughout the galaxy.

I’ve always described Darien as a combo between Harry Potter and the Last Starfighter.

“The visuals of Darien Connors will be very sci-fi, fantasy, superpowers with big bold colors – exciting,” Dillon told me about our project, “Books like Tellos and Crossgen Comics stuff have helped this genre find more of an audience.”

I know my Darien fans will be excited to see his story spread to another medium. I want you to know I’m going to try to keep the comic as true to the original story as possible but as with any migration to a new medium, some liberties and changes may take place.

Just take some solace in that I am the one doing the writing for this comic and you know how dedicated I am to you – my defenders of the realm. I’ll make sure that whatever is changed (if anything) it will be to enhance the story, your understanding of kishpu and the world of Eridu.

Keep an eye out for some sample pages in the coming months and hopefully to a comic book store near you!

To support the Darien initiative, you’ll be seeing many changes to the main site http://darienconnors.com in the coming weeks.

I’ll also try to keep you updated on my twitter feed on the progress.

We’re very excited about our collaboration with Ray and we look forward to bringing you a great comic book adventure!